What's the “^” in RewriteRule Statements?

Question

I keep seeing the ^ character in RewriteRule statements in a context that doesn't fit with the usage specified here.

For example: RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php [L,QSA]

What does it signify?

Answer 1

It means "this matches the start of the string". So in your example the rule does the rewrite if there's

• the start of the string (^)
• any character (.)
• any number of characters (*)
• the end of the string ($)

In other words, this whole expression matches any string.